


Jon Scrapes, Jon Tugs

by v4n_y4



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dermatillomania, Gen, Infestations, Maggots, Not Beta Read, Season 1 or so, They arent real but theyre thought about, minimal dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24584311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v4n_y4/pseuds/v4n_y4
Summary: Oftentimes, Jonathan Sims will scratch and pick at his skin. He doesn't care much, but he at least has the good mind to pay it a little attention.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Jon Scrapes, Jon Tugs

**Author's Note:**

> -The first few paragraphs have a lot of corruption-y, infestation-y talk  
> -This is heavily projection and so I apologize for that

Some of Jon’s hair has fallen out of its loose ponytail. Jon knows this because some of it falls against his ear, and the audible prickling sensation fills him with thoughts of insects crawling around inside of his ear. That thought brings him to both the thought of maggots, and the thought of infestations. Together, these thoughts merge to lead him to the feeling of countless little maggots writhing just beneath his skin, consuming him from the inside out, treating his still-living body like yet another corpse.

It is then that Jon notices the distant sting of his arms. Sure enough, he’d begun to scratch at them while lost in thought. He sighs, unsurprised, and ties his hair back. This time it’s a tighter tie, meant to reduce the risk of this sequence of events repeating itself.

He looks at the statements on his desk. Two of them have mundane explanations. The third, however, deals with a Leitner, and therefore needs to be recorded. Jon straightens the first two statements, carefully aligning them with the top edge of his desk. Not the corner, he makes sure, but simply the top edge. He sighs as he grabs the tape recorder, and then sets the tape up to begin recording.

“Statement of Dale Reynolds regarding constantly and consistently being misremembered. Original statement given May 3rd, 1996. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins…”

It’s not that there’s anything odd about the statement. At least, nothing odd in any way different than what’s normal. It’s just that while reading the statement, Jon finds himself filled with the urge to scratch at the bridge of his nose. Something about needing to keep his hand busy, his mind tells him. He doesn’t care enough to argue, and so he obliges. While it certainly isn’t loud enough for the tape recorder to pick it up, Jon can hear the sound of his nails scraping at his skin alongside the reading of the statement. And if the bridge of his nose looks red and almost bloody by the time the statement is done, then who is he to care?

Apparently, Jon is the only member of the archival staff who doesn’t give the wound a second thought. Sasha is curious, Tim is confused and for whatever reason Martin is worried. It’s not as if this is the worst injury any of them have showed up to work with, though, so Jon finds Martin’s worry somewhat odd. Maybe it’s because most people don’t enter an empty office unharmed, only to leave wounded? He decides that that is the most likely explanation.

That night, Jon realizes he doesn’t have any sort of proper or suitable bandage. It’s a bit of a surprise, and also far from optimal. So, Jon comes to the next logical solution: making himself a bandage by duct-taping a tissue on top of his nose.  
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One would expect that makeshift bandages wouldn’t be that unusual, but there is yet to be a single person Jon encounters who isn’t baffled by the tape. It does look rather foolish, but that doesn’t erase the fact that it has a reasonable purpose. Despite its purpose being important, Jon decides that he’d rather be questioned about a wound than laughed at for a tape-bandage. He discards it, before resuming his work.

Two hands are generally needed for the most efficiency in typing. However, Jon pauses to reread what’s written so far. Within a few seconds of scrolling up to the start of the document, his hand is up against his face. About two-thirds of the way through the first page, he absentmindedly begins to pull at the skin of his lips. It’s a ripping sensation, never very pleasant, but the way he keeps his hand in place as he winces simply makes more of his skin tear away.

He wrinkles his nose as he dabs the blood on his lip, and immediately regrets it as the day-old wound causes a sharp pain. The blood is gone from his face, though, and that’s what matters. Jon resumes his proofreading and corrects an assortment of typos, before reaching the spot he’d left off at and resuming the typing. When he returns home that night, he doesn’t remember to get any new bandages. 

In all honesty? It was only a matter of time before Jon peeled off the scab. He discards the patch of would-be skin, and doesn’t do anything to clean up the blood on his fingers and nose for at least a few minutes. He does, though, in the end, and washes his hands immediately afterwards. 

The soap he uses grates at his skin, quite literally. It’s pumice soap, supposedly heavy-duty, and it’s also what Jon uses as hand soap whenever it’s an option. He tells himself it’s for exfoliation, or something along those lines, but that isn’t it. It’s mainly the scratchiness of it that he likes, the thought that if he rubs his hands together for long enough, they’ll be covered in tiny little cuts.

Later that night, he’s simply reading. It’s a book from a nearby library about soil, and it’s effective in its communication of information. The focus of his eyes doesn’t guarantee the focus of his hands, though, and while his left hand holds the book in place, his right hand reaches up to the skin of his left upper arm searching for bumps. He passively scrapes at any spots that provide the proper amount of resistance, but puts considerably less effort into it than he must’ve put into scratching at his nose.

It is this thought that leads him to trimming his nails, which he needed to do anyways. About once every two weeks or so, he cuts down the distal edge of his nail so that only the clear segment of the plate remains. Jon cleans up the trimmings, the only reasonable option, and files his nails just enough to be able to pull them along the hem of a coat without snagging on the thread at all. After all, that’s the safest option for his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely comprised of Things I Have Done, and for that I am so sorry.


End file.
